Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Doing it Their way and My Way.

The Pacific Northwest is having some beautiful weather lately…and I am enjoying it. This lovley weather means I can continue to do a lot of work outside. My yard is too big for someone who is only home on the weekends, so one of the chores is always trying to find ways to make it as low maintenance as possible.

In between the yard work I was cooking a turkey," Cooks Illustrated" style. I brined it the night before, and cooked it at 425 with celery, onions, carrots & the Simon and Garfunkel herbs. Broth is used on the bottom of the roasting pan since the heat is so high. This method results in a beautiful dark colored yet moist bird. It also makes a tasteful broth form the herbs and vegetables you throw in. The same evening all the bones, broth, vegetables and herbs go in the crock pot and that amazing broth is born. My sister says she loves that part because she can smell it in her bedroom all night long.

So there I was between yard work (and cleaning some spots on the carpet)- doing turkey; breaking it down soon after it was cooked. I was sitting with a kitchen scale weighing out 4 oz portions. These are for my eating plan I said I would to talk about. One of the rules is to plan ahead and to weigh and measure all of your food. Becoming abstinent from sugar, flour, wheat and following the Food Addicts Anonymous Food plan is the path to recovery from the physical aspect of the disease of food addiction. Totally eliminating these substances from our bodies will enable us to live relatively free of cravings and will allow us to focus on the other areas of our recovery.

When I first heard of this, it sounded a bit odd to me. Eliminate whole wheat? That is supposed to be good for you. A food addict? But you have to eat somehow. I thought about it for a couple months and then in December 2007 I started to slowly cut out most caffeine as a start. I tried the food plan thinking it couldn’t hurt and thought if I do not agree I can always stop eating this way. So when I started, I admit, I was not totally committed. Part of the last sentence certainly sounded wonderful; “to live free of cravings”. Ah - that is the freedom I wanted.

There is more to abstinence than the food….it is also a 12 step program. I had a positive outlook on that one – it was working quite well for my son who was in an AA program. He had taught me some of the tools and many of the ideas of this program. Right away I want to state for any FAA people especially, that this blog will not be about being perfect in abstinence- you may get that from the first post- it is going to be talking about me continuing to use the program as best I can using most of tools I can most of the time while learning how much other food I can incorporate into my life. (NOT necessarily eating it- just being around it) I may be successful or the idea could turn into a total flop. A strict FAA person would not recommend it. I will show my reasons for FAA’s thinking and the reasons for mine and promise to be honest with the outcome if I am wrong I will admit my error. If it works for me I still will not recommend it. FAA guidelines should be the rule.

I want to live a full tasteful and exciting life while maintaining a healthy weight. I found that the methods FAA present work well to minimize cravings. I feel much more in control of binging. I feel satisfied most of the time. I have lost weight.

I do not want to have my cake and eat it too, I just want to have my cake and NOT eat it too.